


Twined

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [23]
Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Gen, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 05:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1540109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt!Fill.</p><p>Shun and Hates now share a body. It's a work in progress...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twined

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was "Hatred."

Try as he might, Shun couldn't hate him. He... couldn't. He didn't have it in him.

 

He felt guilty and sad instead, especially at night, when the world went quiet and he could feel the quiet, gentle double-pulse of two people in one form. In softer tatters their cosmos wove into one creation, not gently separated, and the other had raged and screamed and cried, and they had both woke with nightmares of Nike through their stomach.

 

Shun hadn't withdrawn when he had realized what had happened. Certainly, those first few days after the battle, he had felt all out of sorts. He'd had those nightmares then, too. Among others. But there had been too much to do-- so much to do.

 

The blade of Death had gone through Seiya. They had all trespassed into the realm of Gods and great heroes. They had opened the tomb that had held Hades' body safe and trapped since the days of old.

 

Things had gone awful. So many people dead, and the Lord of the Afterlife dead as well...

 

So he hadn't noticed. He had expected to be out of sorts, because everyone was. And if anyone else had noticed-- well. They had expected him to be.

 

And he had gotten so used to not seeing color that he hadn't realized that it hadn't come back. Hadn't realized he was picking out shades of white and black and gray, his mind supplementing what clothes were supposed to be what color. Hadn't realized he was just automatically classifying what the others wore by what they had always worn, instead of what they were wearing.

 

He hadn't realized he had wept for Pandora before Ikki ever told him she was dead.

 

So he hadn't noticed, and neither had they. Until Shiryuu-- Shiryuu, of course --had pulled him aside and asked what was wrong with his cosmos.

 

He-- they-- had told him it was nothing. Because it wasn't. He had grown up like this, edges of pink shading into darker tones, Andromeda's wind and the endless depth of a God's well, so deep light would never pierce it.

 

Shun knew, without a single drop of doubt, what it was after a fortnight. When he had reached inside himself for calm, and found hurt so deep he couldn't breathe.

 

After Hades' hold on him, his hair had bled red. Shun didn't remember it, himself, but he remembered someone mentioning it. When Tatsumi wanted to know why he had dyed his hair, they had brushed it aside with a laugh; it was dye, and it looked better, didn't it?

 

Even though they hadn't. Hades had apologized for that, in the quiet silence of the night, his voice a whisper from Shun's own tongue. They had broken things down after that-- and broken a vase.

 

He listened to his heartbeat, and His heartbeat, and the quiet.

 

Hades was a God. And killing a God was a sin no soul could commit, even under another God's name. It wasn't possible, that was all. Oh, Athena had killed his body. Athena could trap his soul, but the body was finally, finally free. It would reincarnate again, as Poseidon's always had, as Athena's always would.

 

But that would take time, and Hades wasn't prepared for that. He hadn't been settled in his own form when Athena had struck, his soul not tethered. So it hadn't gone with his body-- not yet. It had, instead, the whole of him but the flesh, had returned to what had been his host for thirteen years.

 

Shun. Shun, and his honesty, his passivity, his innocence, his forgiveness. Shun, and his young soul, everything that had made him Hades' perfect vessel.

 

Everything that made him Hades.

 

He'd gotten... stuck. He had stayed tied to Shun even after Athena's blood had touched them-- he had been in Shun so long that only Shun's death would sever them, now. Athena's blood had made sure of that. Shun could have gotten into Elysium without Athena's help. He'd been carrying part of Hades, after all.

 

Shun wasn't angry. Hades was angry enough; at Athena, but that was it. Athena pry-baring them apart had made things worse, not better. But then, Shun suspected, having heard the story, that Hades would always be angry at Athena. At his jailer.

 

Elysium had been his prison. Pandora's box had been his prison.

 

Now Shun was his prison. Athena's blood had made it so. They had been woven together before that, but capable of separation. She had forced them apart, and the threads that held them together had pulled taut.

 

Shun stared at the darkness of his room and tried to imagine himself in Hades' proverbial shoes, leashed to an agent of his jailer for the rest of the jail's natural existence. It made him sad. “..I wont do that to you.”  
  
“I could cut us free,” Hades said after a moment, Shun's lips twisting into the words and his vocal cords aching, just a bit. They had been so sore, those first few days. He hadn't spoken a lot after taking over, in the safety of his world. In the Afterlife. It had hurt.

 

And now it still would, for a while. The muscles had to get used to pulling that way, to making the sounds for his voice. It might be easier when Shun got older and his voice cracked, but for now, they would make due.

 

Close as they were, thinking probably would have done the job. But it would have been less satisfying, and with the temptation of freedom so close, Hades would not pass up the chances to test his limits now. Shun was willing to let him.

 

Shun was staying quiet, aware of the rest Hades wasn't telling him. If not the details. Hades waited another moment more, and they reached out, together, and curled their fingers tentatively around a metal cup. Hades was, by nature, much, much stronger than Shun was. His cosmos augmented his every movement. They had broken a dozen glasses in the first few weeks already, enough that Kiki had found him metal ones. Metal bent, and could be reforged if it did.

 

Kiki, Shun thought, might know there was more than one person here.

 

He waited. Finally, Hades sighed, a sound deep and from the depths of shared, bruised lungs. It hurt, too. “Cutting us apart, as tight as she has made us, would be counterproductive. You... in Elysium... I'd like to see you there again. I do not want to damage those chances.”

 

“So it's not a option?”

 

“Not an option.”

 

That was okay, Shun decided. He had grown up this way; not having Hades' heart beside his own would leave him... lonely. He curled his arms around himself, nursing the sense of comfort of Them, which he knew Hades had probably always felt, but had never been able to really accept. Hades had been alone for a long time, and none of his hosts had ever been... willing.

 

“You can stay? We can just share.”

 

By the burst of surprise that was not his own, Hades clearly hadn't thought that an option, either.

 

That was okay. The one thing Shun couldn't do was hate him.


End file.
